The Government of Jordan recently announced that it has begun to revoke the citizenship of Palestinians living there, including people who were born in the country. A few days earlier President Obama’s administration announced that it would resettle 1,350 Palestinian refugees from Iraq in the United States, presumably because no Arab nation would accept them.

These events are not surprising given the antipathy of the Arab world towards Palestinians over the years and the concomitant failure to assist them in any meaningful way. The truth is the Arab world has done nothing but use Palestinians as pawns as part of a much larger effort to remove Israel from it’s midst. Other than that, it has no real use for the Palestinian people and will neither welcome them into individual countries as citizens and fellow Arabs nor provide large scale humanitarian aid with any kind of consistency or regularity.

The Arab world has always seen Palestinians as pariahs and poor relations and these decisions are simply the latest in a long line that prove the point. Rhetoric is commonplace but events have proven that the rhetoric has no substance. To use but two examples among many why else does it allow refugee camps to exist and why does it allow so many Palestinians to live in poverty?

What can Palestinians take from all of this? They must realize that in the end they are on their own and their fate is in their hands and no one else’s. The only way they will ever get their own state is by taking the initiative and acting for themselves by themselves and not waiting for others to solve their problems or for solutions to be imposed from outside. This is a lesson Israelis learned long ago and Palestinians would be well advised to learn it too. No one but them has their best interests at heart and if their best interests include living in peace and prosperity with their neighbors in Israel only they will make it happen. If Israelis are convinced of their sincerity they will prove to be very eager partners because peaceful coexistence is something they deeply desire and deem to be in their best interests.

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